Uncle Al Can Fix It

What a Good Tailor Can Do For You.

I own four blazers. The oldest is black: bought in Chinatown, fitted for me by a Taiwanese guy named Mr. Henry who refused to change out the brass buttons. I wear it often enough. The second is corduroy, which I wear only outside. The third was custom-tailored in Bloomington, Indiana, of all places, blue and vaguely plaid. Semiretired, that one. Which brings me to the Burberry: I bought it on eBay for a mere $39 and loved it from the moment I pulled it from the crushed shipping box. I wore it to poker games, to literature classes, when getting coffee. I hung it every night and thought, It even hangs like a champ. But one afternoon, I noticed it seemed a little flappy in back and that it popped out at the top button—sort of tenting out in front of me.

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So I took it to my uncle Alfred.

My uncle Alfred lives in Florida. At 88, he sometimes enjoys an afternoon of low-limit poker. The sign on the front of his shop in Delray Beach says 40 YEARS IN MANHASSET, which I believe says it all (and also sounds like a chapter in Moby-Dick). My uncle Alfred is a tailor.

He fitted the blazer in the den of his house. He tugged the lapels twice, pressed them flat, then went around behind me and made two small marks on the flap and at the waist. Thirty seconds end to end. "That's it?" I said. "Not much work, eh?"

My uncle Alfred shrugged, the way he does, using mostly his chin and the pinch of his lips. The man gives away very little. "I didn't say that," he said. "It's just I know from the marks what I have to do. Doesn't have to take so long to mark it, you know. A tailor knows his own notation."

Next day in the shop, he hung the Burberry and pulled out a tiny knife. "With a coat, it's mostly just touch," he said. "You put your hands on it and pretty soon you know. You feel the shoulders. Is it a smooth curve? Can you feel the pad too much? Finger the lapels: Are they curling already? Lapels should lie flat."

He slid the blade under the lining, pulling away the stitching and then turning it, pulling the whole deal inside out. "In this job, you gotta have a sharp knife," he said. Soon the whole construction looked like a flayed animal carcass. "A blazer is built from the lining out," he went on. "The lining makes a foundation for the outer fabric. The lining has to give something to the structure. In a lousy jacket, the lining gives you no tension; it just hangs—it was made backwards. Usually, I'm saying. It isn't generous beyond the seams. They made it outside in."

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My uncle Alfred worked for several minutes without talking. Chin down, glasses perched on his nose. Soon he rejoined the center seam by using his sewing machine. "You don't gotta hand-stitch under the lining. I never do. People go off their cuckoo for hand-stitching, but the truth is the machine can be pretty damned good. You let the tailor make the best choices for the coat, and then you wear it."

My uncle Alfred stitched, yanked some more, pulled twice, and then, just like that, my Burberry reemerged like a pigeon from a magician's scarf—not even wrinkled. "This is a nice coat," he said. Then I put it on and we went to play cards. I asked him if I was dressed for it. He said I was dressed for anything.

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